Responsible AI for Youth | 01 Jun 2020

Why in News

Recently, the government has launched a National Program for the youth namely, ‘Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Youth’.

  • The government has also launched India’s National Artificial Intelligence Portal called www.ai.gov.in.

Artificial Intelligence

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) describes the action of machines accomplishing tasks that have historically required human intelligence.
  • It includes technologies like machine learning, pattern recognition, big data, neural networks, self algorithms etc.
    • Example: Facebook’s list of suggested friends for its users, a pop-up page, telling about an upcoming sale of the favourite brand of shoes and clothes, that comes on screen while browsing the internet, are the work of artificial intelligence.
  • AI involves complex things such as feeding a particular data into the machine and making it react as per the different situations.

National Artificial Intelligence Portal

  • The portal has been jointly developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM).
  • The portal will work as a one stop digital platform for sharing of resources such as articles, startups, investment funds in AI, resources, companies and educational institutions related to AI in India. It will also share documents, case studies, research reports etc.
  • It also has a section about learning and new job roles related to AI.

Responsible AI for Youth Programme

  • Aims:
    • The Program is designed to reach out to students from Government schools pan India and provide them with an opportunity to become part of the skilled workforce in an inclusive manner.
    • It aims to help reduce the skill gap, while enabling youth to create meaningful social impact solutions.
    • It also intends to provide a platform for relevant AI skill-sets and access to required AI tool-sets to make youth digitally ready for the future.
  • Description:
    • The Program has been created and launched by the Ministry of Electronics & IT in collaboration with Intel India, with support from the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
    • The National Programme is open to students of classes 8-12 from Central and State government-run schools (including KVS, NVS, JNV) from across the country.
    • The Program will be implemented in a phase-wise manner and in its first phase, each State will nominate 10 teachers as per the eligibility criteria.
      • These teachers will be provided sessions aimed to help them understand the premise and identify 25-50 potential students for the Program.
      • The identified students will attend online training sessions on AI and will learn to identify social impact projects that may be created using AI.
      • Further, top 20 innovative projects will be selected by an independent committee of experts and provided opportunities to showcase at relevant platforms.

Way Forward

  • The launch of the programme will help to develop the base for Artificial Intelligence in the country.
  • India’s AI approach will also help for inclusion and empowerment of human beings by supplementing growth and development specifically in the field of education, agriculture, healthcare, e-commerce, finance, telecommunications, etc.
  • Thus introduction of the Responsible AI for Youth Programme is expected to find innovative long term solutions which will help to reduce the existing digital gap in the country.

Source:PIB